The present invention relates to an oxygen-enriched air supplying apparatus; and, more particularly, to an oxygen-enriched air supplying apparatus suitable for an air treating device such as an air conditioner, an air cleaner or the like.
An air treating device, e.g., an air conditioner, is widely used to treat the air in a closed room. However, when the room is maintained in a closed state for a long time, a variety of side effects, e.g., breathing difficulty, headache, weakening of memory, etc., may be caused to the people therein.
As an effort to ameliorate these problems, apparatuses for supplying an oxygen-enriched air to a room have been developed. One of them is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,427,484 entitled xe2x80x9cAIR CONDITIONER HAVING OXYGEN-ENRICHED DEVICExe2x80x9d.
Referring to FIGS. 1 and 2, there are shown a schematic view of a prior art oxygen-enriched air supplier and a lateral cross sectional view of a separator 50 included in the oxygen-enriched air supplier.
As shown in FIG. 1, the oxygen-enriched air supplier includes an air compressor 10, a muffler 20, a first and a second filter assembly 30 and 40, an oxygen-enriched air separator 50 and a connection pipe 60 for connecting the air compressor 10, the muffler 20, the filter assemblies 30 and 40, an oxygen-enriched air separator 50 with each other, and an oxygen-enriched air discharging pipe 70.
The air compressor 10 is installed at one side of an outdoor unit (not shown) of an air conditioner (not shown) to compress the air introduced from the outside.
The muffler 20 is provided near a suction unit (not shown) of the air compressor 20 to reduce noises generated when exterior air is introduced into the air compressor 10.
The first and the second filter assembly 30 and 40 are installed in the connection pipe 60 at locations between the air compressor 10 and the oxygen-enriched air separator 50 to remove impurities contained in the air compressed by the air compressor 10. Further, the first filter assembly 30 removes a pulsating pressure of the compressed air generated from the air compressor 10 and the second filter assembly 40 eliminates condensed water from the compressed air.
Referring to FIG. 2, the oxygen-enriched air separator 50 includes a main body 51, a plurality of separation membranes 57 and a narrow tube 58 acting as a pressure maintenance means. The main body 51 is a hollow cylinder-shaped member and the separation membranes 57 are accommodated within the main body 51 by using a pair of bulk heads 80. Each of the separation membranes 57 is a cylindrical tube with two open ends. The inside of the main body 51 is divided by the bulk heads 80 and the separation membranes 57 into a first space 52 communicating with the inside of the separation membranes 57 and a second space 53 communicating with the outside of the separation membranes 57. Furthermore, the main body 51 has an oxygen-enriched air inlet port 54 and a nitrogen-enriched air outlet port 55 communicating with the first spaces 52, respectively, and an oxygen-enriched air outlet port 56 communicating with the second space 53. The ports 54, 55 and 56 are respectively connected to the connection pipe 60, the narrow tube 58 and the oxygen-enriched air discharging pipe 70.
The oxygen-enriched air supplier starts to operate when an oxygen-enriched air supplying function is chosen in a manual operation mode or an automatic operation mode.
Supply of the oxygen-enriched air is triggered by an operation of the air compressor 10. The air from the outside of the room is introduced into and compressed by the air compressor 10 after it passes through the muffler 20. During this time, the muffler 20 reduces noises generated when the air is introduced into the air compressor 10. The compressed air is introduced through the connection pipe 60 to the oxygen-enriched air separator 50. While the compressed air travels through the connection pipe 60, the first and the second filter assembly 30 and 40 remove impurities and condensed water from the compressed air.
Thus impurity-removed air is introduced into the oxygen-enriched air separator 50 via the oxygen-enriched air inlet port 54. Thereafter, the introduced air moves from one of the first space 52 to the other thereof. During this time, some of the air permeates the separation membranes 57 and moves from the first space 52 to the second space 53, and the remaining air stays in the first space 52. The air passing through the separation membranes 57 is an oxygen-enriched air and the remaining air in the first space 52 is a nitrogen-enriched air. The oxygen-enriched air is discharged into the room through the oxygen-enriched air outlet port 56 and the oxygen-enriched air discharging pipe 70, while the nitrogen-enriched air is exhausted to the outside of the room through the nitrogen-enriched air outlet port 55 and the narrow tube 58.
In such an oxygen-enriched apparatus, a separation efficiency of the ordinary air into the oxygen-enriched air is low, since the compressor serving as a motive power of the separation operation is disposed at the inlet side of the separator.
Moreover, it is difficult to fabricate the separators since the separator has a cylindrical shape as well as complicated structure. Furthermore, it is cumbersome to perform the sealing between the bulk heads and the main body, and/or between the bulk heads and the separation membranes.
It is, therefore, a primary object of the present invention to provide an oxygen-enriched supplying apparatus having an improved separation efficiency of separating an oxygen-enriched air from an atmospheric air.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an oxygen-enriched supplying apparatus having separators capable of being simply manufactured.
In accordance with an aspect of the present invention, there is provided an apparatus for supplying an oxygen-enriched air, comprising:
one or more hollow membrane units spaced apart from each other, for separating a surrounding air thereof into an oxygen-enriched air and a nitrogen-enriched air;
an oxygen-enriched air suction means for sucking in the surrounding air via the separation membrane units to draw in and provide the oxygen-enriched air; and
an oxygen-enriched air discharging unit for discharging the oxygen-enriched air.